


(Balanced There) Like a Rainbow Above you

by SnailArmy



Category: The Mechanisms (Band)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, lyf has story tentacles, mention of freezing to death alone in the void of space, no i will not explain
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-26
Updated: 2020-04-26
Packaged: 2021-03-02 10:28:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,554
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23849704
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SnailArmy/pseuds/SnailArmy
Summary: The Bifrost Incident may have changed Lyf, but it didn't give them anything they didn't have already. Maybe they can use that to not die in space. Or to fight a giant squid. You know, whatever.
Comments: 13
Kudos: 134
Collections: Stowaways' Shenanigans





	(Balanced There) Like a Rainbow Above you

**Author's Note:**

> This is highly inspired by the theory that everyone's Mechanism is a dowsing rod for stories. I don't remember your username right now but I love you. 
> 
> Title from Rainbow Veins, by Owl City (which is an excellent lyf song, along with The Technicolor Phase)

Logically, Lyf thinks it must have started when they opened the black box for the first time. If not, then the first time they saw the uncorrupted footage, when they beheld the squamous horror in full terrible clarity. Something tagged along with the information entering their brain, burrowing into their spinal cord and embedding itself deep within them. But somehow, inexplicably, it feels _deeper_ than that. Like it's been within them from birth, waiting dormant and only awakened by the cruel revelation of the things that lie beyond their world. 

It would explain a lot of things. The way Lyf was drawn to theater and english class, even when they had no particular talent for either. How they took their position as inspector-second-class without hesitation, despite it being far from what they thought they wanted for themself. The way those three _damned_ prisoners seemed to buzz with a magnetism that no one else was affected by or even noticed. 

The way they pulled ridiculous hours of overtime to solve a crime eighty years past, no victims nor perpetrators left alive to care whether justice was brought. It's not like a few days should have made any difference after all those years. But they did, didn't they? 

Lyfrassir had made it out of that system by the skin of their teeth. If, even once during that time, they had taken a break, they would have been lost with all the others. If they had listened to their friends, their boss, their family, if they had gone home on time even one of those long nights. So why didn't they? 

Lyf was working on a theory. They had plenty of time to think, now, flying through deep space in a tiny charter ship that was almost certainly not meant for this. Looking back, it felt as if the black box had reached out, grabbed onto some metaphysical part of Lyf and dragged them along. But it wasn't the black box itself, nor the footage inside. The more Lyf considered it, the more clear the answer was, though it was no less confusing. What had compelled them onward was the story itself. 

Looking back, they could catch glimpses of similar occurrences. They always seemed to be in just the right place at just the right time. The feeling was subtle back then, a gentle nudge. Whatever the bifrost incident had done to them was violent and tearing, and Lyf feared was irreversible. Even now, they felt like that metaphysical part of them had been stretched beyond the confines of their body. When they closed their eyes, they could almost see them; long, thin tendrils, emanating from every part of their body, waving gently through the air, straining to pick up a trace of a story. Like a jellyfish. 

The effect was altogether rather unsettling. It wasn't like Lyf had anything better to do with their time, though. Their therapist would probably be proud of them, the way they tried out each of the mindfulness exercises that had seemed so pointless before. Slowly, their awareness and control over their new - power? they decided to call it a power - grew. There weren't many stories to be found in deep space, so it was difficult to calibrate. 

Lyf wasn't sure how long it took for the next idea to come to them. They knew they couldn't keep floating through deep space forever, but they hadn't had time to chart a proper course before fleeing Hoddmimus. They didn't have much fuel left, just enough for a single course correction and a relatively safe landing should they ever find civilization again. 

There was one thing that they could try. It was a long shot, but it was better than starving/freezing/suffocating alone in the vast of space. Lyf stood over the controls, took a deep breath, and closed their eyes. 

They couldn't read charts or instruments, but they could find stories. Stories meant people. If this new sense could send them in the direction of a story, they could be saved. Or, at the very least, they would die in a more interesting way. Gently, they reached out with their mind, sensing first only the grey hum that was typical of their ship. Pushing a little further, they noticed some dull color; one of the few novels they had managed to grab in their flight. Farther still, then. For the first time, Lyf felt the tendrils penetrate the hull of the ship, and they gasped involuntarily at the cold black empty that lay beyond. It was entirely devoid of color or feeling, and for the first time Lyfrassir felt how truly alone and insignificant they were. 

It was so cold, and so dark. Desperately, now, Lyf reached out farther, searching for any pinprick of light or warmth that would indicate the thread of a story. The feeling threatened to overwhelm them, buried as they were in their coffin of a ship. They were stretching themself so thin, they had never reached out this far before, was there even anything out there to find? 

Faintly, they could feel their heart racing and their knees threatening to give in. They couldn't keep this up for much longer, there had to be _something_ -! 

There. Up and to the left of Lyf's current position, they felt the faintest hint of amber. They sighed in relief as they collapsed into the pilot's chair, taking a moment to recover before making the necessary course adjustment. The signal was barely there, but it was the closest thing for lightyears around, so it would have to do. Lyf cursed themself for forgetting their seatbelt as the engines kicked on with a jolt, burning the last of the supplementary fuel reserve and sending them flying across the room. Their little stunt had drained them as well as their ship, though, and they figured the floor where they had fallen was as good a place as any to take a nap. The last thing they heard before drifting off fully was a long beep. 

The beep was, regrettably, still going when Lyf woke up. Between the headache and the full-body soreness from sleeping on the metal floor, it was not an ideal start to the day. They dragged themself over to the console and started mashing buttons at random until the beeping stopped. 

With that taken care of, Lyf retreated to their meager living quarters for a snack and a proper night's sleep. There wasn't anything they could do now but wait. 

-

By the time the system came into view, Lyf was half convinced that they were hallucinating. They had heard that isolation would do that to a person, and they were nothing if not lonely. But the sensor readings seemed to agree that they were approaching something big, so Lyf prepared for their long journey to be over. They had spent so long by themself, they weren't entirely sure they would know how interact with people anymore. And what if the inhabitants of this planet were hostile? What if they couldn't figure out how to communicate? Lyf was going into this situation entirely blind, and that was a recipe for disaster. Maybe they should just stay on the ship. 

But their food supply was running dangerously low, and the water reclamation unit has been making a funny noise for months now. They really didn't have another option, besides "untimely end." Thus resolved, they flipped a dusty switch simply labelled "comms." A blue light flashed one, twice, then stayed on as the small cabin was filled with static. After thirty-seven seconds (Lyf counted), the static was abruptly replaced by the voice of a woman. 

"-is the Planetary Air Defense Council, please identify yourself. Repeat, please give identification. Over." 

Well, on the bright side, Lyf understood the language. 

"This is Inspector Second Class Lyfrassir Edda, formerly of the New Midgard Transport Police, arriving in the vessel Vidar."

There's a long moment of silence on the other end. 

"I'm sorry, did you say Midgard?"

"New Midgard, technically, but yes. Please, I don't have anywhere else to go. It's all gone. I'm the only one left." Their voice cracked, and they realized with a start that they were crying. It had been so long since they had heard another person, let alone talked about the destruction of their system. 

The woman's tone changed. It was softer now, but with an undercurrent of disbelief. "Hey. It's okay. We'll find you some place to land, and then we'll get it all sorted out. Lyfrassir, right? Do you know how to land your vessel?"

She - her name was Theophania, as it turns out - stayed on the line with Lyf and walked them through navigating and landing their craft. As they entered the atmosphere, though, all the colors and the stories came to Lyf at once, utterly overwhelming after the cold emptiness of space. It took all of their willpower to maintain the controls; as soon as they hit the ground (less precise than they would have liked, but no one was killed) they were out like a light. 

-

Their hospital stay, quarantine, and meetings with various social workers were all a bit of a blur. But nothing had been seriously damaged, they didn't seem to be carrying anything infectious and deadly, and this planet - Idavoll - had a surprisingly comprehensive support system for people who dropped out of the sky with no resources or connections. The close-packed thrum of stories took a bit of getting used to, but slowly they learned to adjust. Just as they could reach out and find stories, they learned to 'withdraw' their senses and let the colors fade into the background. They got a house, and a new job, and a therapist. Everything was okay. 

Until Lyfrassir found a story they couldn't ignore. It was a pulsing, angry red, and it seemed to permeate the very ground of the planet. The constant intrusion gave them a headache, and they had to call off work for a few days. When the problem didn't go away, Lyf knew what they had to do. They packed up an overnight bag and got into their car, reaching out with their tendrils to find where the story was strongest. They wouldn't know peace until they saw the story through to the end. 

At the end of a long road trip, Lyf sat on an old quilt on a cliff overlooking the sea. The sun was setting behind them, and the sight was rather pretty. Lyfrassir couldn't relax, though. All of their story-senses were saying that something _big_ was going to happen here, and soon. All they could do was watch. Again. 

They couldn't linger on that thought too long, though. There was another story, cutting through the omnipresent red. Well, _stories_. They were still far off above them, but there were so many, every color tangled up and shifting in an impossibly small space. They were approaching rapidly, but even from here it was a lot. It wasn't _squamous_ , thank fuck, but something about it still made their skin itch with the echo of a memory. 

So they cracked open their bottle of whiskey and prepared for the show. Whatever was going to happen was guaranteed to be interesting, at the very least.

The first thing that happened was the chromatic mass of stories landing somewhere just off the horizon. It must have been some sort of spaceship, then. After a while Lyf heard the hum of a large vehicle coming from that direction, and they gently reached out a tendril to see if it was relevant. There were three main colors, heady and vibrant and more complex than anything Lyf had sensed before. The cold blue-grey of pistol lead, a reddish-brown like bloodstained wood, and a tannish green color that was hauntingly familiar, though Lyf knew they had never seen anything like it before. 

Just as the vehicle was within sight, a loud noise from the other direction caught Lyf's attention. From the ocean rose an enormous beast, a rubbery triangular thing with eight legs and two tentacles. It was the source of the angry red story, which mingled now with the other three that were rapidly approaching. Lyf took another long swig of whiskey. 

The giant squid was moving slowly towards land as the three new stories barreled into view in some sort of open-air dune buggy. There were three people, decked out in ridiculous outfits and armed to the teeth. Lyf only caught a glimpse of them before they went flying over the edge, never once hitting the brakes. They winced when they heard the crash of the vehicle hitting the rocks below, but a quick glance revealed all three people to be still up and moving, apparently unharmed from the impact. That was weird, but not unheard of. In fact, Lyf was reminded rather suddenly of the three prisoners from back on Midgard. 

That was it. That's where Lyf recognized that vibe from. One of the people at the bottom of this sea cliff fighting that giant squid was Marius von Raum. Lyfrassir groaned and finished off the whiskey. There wasn't that much left in the bottle, and they needed all the help they could get. Especially if they were going to go through with the stupid plan their brain just helpfully provided. 

They could feel themself being drawn forward by that familiar patina, each tendril straining down the steep slope. Lyf knew they had to get that story. Despite their mildly inebriated state, the sounds drifting up from below of maniacal laughter and weapons being fired, and the fact that their shoes were decidedly _not_ intended for mountain climbing, Lyf began making their way down the cliff towards the scene of the battle. Luckily, the giant squid was thoroughly distracted by the exciting variety of weapons being used against it. 

All told, it wasn't a particularly high sea cliff, which meant that Lyf was not entirely fucked when they slipped about halfway down and found themself plummeting towards the bottom. They braced for impact on the sharp rocks - but were instead caught with a soft fleshy _thump_. Cautiously, they opened their eyes, to find the smarmy face of one Marius von Raum staring down at them. 

For once, he was speechless. They stared at each other for a long moment, Marius holding Lyf easily in his arms. Then a man in too much eyeliner and too many belts - his story was reddish brown, like a desert sunset, violent and tragic all at once - he was shouting. 

"A little help, von Raum?" 

They both turned to see the giant squid flailing wildly, one tentacle wrapped around the third man (his story grey as gunmetal, and gunpowder, and moondust) who was firing his gun with some difficulty. 

All at once Marius laughed and returned Lyf to their feet, picking up his own gun and turning towards the beast. 

"Back pocket!" He shouted in Lyf's general direction, which they took as a cue. Carefully pulling aside his coat, Lyf found a large pistol tucked in Marius' trousers. They grinned as they took it and joined the fray. 

This may not have been how they were expecting their new life to go, but adult life was already so goddamned weird. Might as well have a little fun.

**Author's Note:**

> yes it was a gun in his pocket yes he was also happy to see them


End file.
